Blanche Barton, former Church of Satan high priestess (1969–2002), clarifies Anton LaVey’s philosophy as rational humanism—rejecting supernatural claims while embracing self-empowerment through "magic" as psychological energy. She dismisses satanic panic, like the McMartin preschool case, as hysteria fueled by financial incentives and scapegoating, contrasting Satanism’s ethics with traditional religions’ fear-based control. The Church’s growth over 50 years, despite LaVey’s death in 1997, underscores its focus on personal responsibility over external authority, leaving the afterlife undefined to prioritize present-life defiance and reason. [Automatically generated summary]
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The death toll, just a couple of items here, from the fiery explosions in China, as I knew it would, has now climbed to 50.
700 were injured.
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They still really don't know exactly what it was.
Now, we talk about the air and the condition of the planet.
In China, air pollution is killing 4,000 people a day.
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From theanomalous.com, a lucky eyewitness in Illinois got the sighting of a lifetime during a thunderstorm.
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During a thunderstorm last month, when he managed to capture one of the most elusive phenomenons to ever be studied.
No, not a UFO.
The flying object has been tentatively identified as ball lightning.
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All right, so coming up in a moment is, and I have been sprinkling my studio, by the way, with holy water.
Actually, not little tap water here.
Came out of a hole, though.
Born and raised in San Diego, this amazing person coming up, Blanche Barton, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Redlands College with a degree in journalism and literature.
She met Anton LeVay.
I guess you know who that is, right, most of you?
She met Anton LeVeye the day after the previous high priestess left the black house.
Barton became LeVay's companion and mother of his only son.
She became high priestess of the Church of Satan, holding this title until April 30, 2002, when she assumed the role of chairmistress of the Council of Nine.
Her biography of LeVay, The Secret Life of a Satanist, the authorized biography of Anton LeVay, was originally published in 1990, and an expanded edition is available now.
Blanche also wrote The Church of Satan, a history of the world's most notorious religion.
And I assume that you probably keep the title, much as congressmen and senators keep the title even after they've left office, you're still probably high priestess, right?
Well, people are very respectful to me, but my title officially is the Magistra Templi Rex, which is below the current High Priestess, who is Peggy Nadramia.
And that just means that I'm the head of the Council of Nine and that I'm a grand pubah in the Church of Satan, right below the other ultimate grand pubahs.
And Anton LeVay was asked that very question when he started the Church of Satan.
And people said, you know, if you would just call it something else, you know, if you called it humanism, he talks about this in the Satanic Bible, which he published in 1969.
You know, if you called it humanism or even Typhoniism or something, maybe you'd get more followers.
But his point was that he didn't want more followers.
The point of calling it Satanism is there's always a Satan in every culture.
There's always the accuser.
There's always the other.
There's always the one outside.
And he's the scapegoat.
And it's dangerous.
It's dangerous to have scapegoats.
Christianity has scapegoats.
Muslim beliefs have scapegoats.
And to demonize others, when you say, I'm a good guy, and those people over there are bad guys, we can kill them.
We can shoot them.
We can torture them because they're the bad guys.
And you know that Satan is evil, right?
Because you've been told that all your life.
Yes, yes.
But what else?
This is a word that you've been programmed to be afraid of.
So what else have you been programmed to be afraid of?
That's why you need Satanists right now, because the political season is kicking off.
And look at what you have to choose from.
We're not just about anti-Christianity or anti-theism.
You know, that's a very big part of what we are.
But anything that's a sacred cow has to be examined and challenged whenever you see broad generalizations or scapegoating or ad hominem attacks instead of actual arguments on important issues.
You know, you were talking about we've got serious environmental problems right now.
We've got serious economic problems.
And what are we doing?
We're killing each other over phantoms, over lies.
And that's not how we bring things together to save our planet right now.
Yeah, well, the point is that we do enter the ritual chamber.
We have lesser magic, greater magic that we indulge in as a part of poetic nature in humans, but we do it consciously.
We go into what we call the intellectual decompression chamber.
We put on our robes and we call forth the icons that we find bring us power within ourselves.
But we know that we're calling forth the power within ourselves, but we're using the poetic metaphors to reach places, that part of the human brain that we don't quite understand, that a lot of your other people that are on your show try to understand more, consciousness and the powers of the human brain and human Potential.
We do it based first and foremost on reasonableness and rationality.
Then we add in the more metaphysical explorations.
Or if we don't want to, it's not necessary to do that as a Satanist.
But if you want to play with the poetics of it, then that's okay too.
But we don't build our foundation on sand.
And that's what most religions do.
They build them on sand, and they lead to blindness and prejudice, and they impose ignorance on their children and a distrust of science.
And that's not the best of what human beings can be.
The pulpit from which, pulpit, excuse me, the position from which you preach perhaps calls into question, you know, many people, the whole thing is called into question, frankly.
Satan and the word, you're right, the devil, Satan, whatever.
It scares hell out of people.
And I guess that's exactly what it's intended to do.
He started out interested in magic, but he also had a wonderful skill with music.
So he played the oboe, and keyboards were his real love.
And he became a hypnotist.
He worked in a carnival.
He worked in the circus.
He was a police photographer.
And out of all of those roles, he saw human tragedy and human foibles up close and personal.
He saw people sneaking in to look at the burlesque girls in the carnival and then sneaking across on Sunday to go with their families to see the tent show revivalists and cleanse their souls of all their wicked thoughts.
Well, he began with an interest in magic and the supernatural.
And he did.
He checked out as many people as he thought might have a gateway into other worlds, other ways of being.
Madame Blavatsky or Alistair Crowley.
And they were all so dry and boring and sad and obfuscating.
He just wanted the real deal.
And I think people are attracted to his philosophy.
One of the reasons that they're attracted to his philosophy is because he doesn't dance around.
He says what he means.
He means what he says.
He says, this is how I do what I do.
Go in the ritual chamber, try it.
If it works for you, great.
Try these methods that I wrote in the Satanic Witch about basic psychology, reading people, cold readings that he learned in the carnival, the whole process of looking at nonverbal cues, and make it work for you.
I have experienced magical consequences of what I've done in the ritual chamber.
As I say, though, that doesn't mean that if you go into the ritual chamber and you do exactly what I did, it may not work for you because, to be honest, now this is just me speculating.
This isn't Church of Satan policy.
But it's almost as if everybody has a different frequency.
And Anton talked about this when he was playing music for animals in the circus.
He said, you don't play the same song for an elephant as you do for a tiger because they have different rhythms.
They have different moods.
And I think certain people are just attracted to the satanic mythos.
We're attracted to the anti-hero, you know, like Lord Byron, you know, with the Miltonian anti-hero, the light bearer, Lucifer, you know, or Prometheus, for example, who risks the wrath of the gods in order to bring the fire of wisdom and intellect and creativity to human beings, you know, and he was punished for it.
Or the ultimate, of course, in the Garden of Eden, the serpent, you know, tempting with the apple of knowledge from the tree of knowledge.
All these metaphors are the same.
And these are things that inspire me.
Religion presents you with metaphors and myths, stories that codify and strengthen you.
They're almost like a group art project to me, you know, because they communicate what is important to a given society, what you hold dear, what rituals you find important, and what those ideals are.
So my ideal is not some guy hanging on a cross.
I'm sorry, when my back is up against the wall, I want, you know, a dynamic, life-affirming, poetic image of Satan, who is the ultimate anti-hero.
You know, there's a lot that we do not understand about the interactions of time, space, matter.
We're sort of nibbling around the edges, and we now understand that true to long, long history of witchcraft, that blood, semen, all the body fluids and hair that are used traditionally in magic, that now, lo and behold, contains people's DNA.
So it is a direct link to an individual.
When the witches started doing that, including blood and hair and stuff in their cells, so it's a lot of fun.
Again, Anton LeVay lays it out very clearly in the satanic Bible.
There are certain elements that need to be addressed, including imagery, and there's also the balance factor.
He includes that very important element because he says that you need to be aware of who you are and what potency you have.
If you're a 25-watt person, and you're sexually attracted to a 100-watt woman or man, maybe you should set your sights a little lower than trying to attract that particular person to start out.
But again, I'm going to keep going down this road as far as I can take you.
And I will ask, is it possible to use a person's essence, bodily fluids, whatever, essence, in a positive way for them as well as a negative way for them?
If you're talking about the metaphorical devil, I mean, he unleashed, 50 years ago, he unleashed this power of all the people that now call themselves Satanists.
And we are doing fabulous things, wonderful things in publishing.
We have a lot of people in military.
We have people making art, tattoos, lawyers, teachers, all sorts of people doing amazing, wonderful things.
And that was, you know, there'd never really been an actual calling forth of the devil and giving him his due the way that Anton Levay did.
There'd been, you know, before there had been sort of prankish ceremonies, the hellfire clubs, and references to the devil and heretics and stuff.
But there hadn't been people stepping forward and pridefully, purposefully taking the name of Satan and saying, this is how we define Satan.
This is what he represents for us.
And move over because we're living life and we're having a great time.
And she has described spells going after people like you described, the disgruntled worker, the one you're unhappy with, and how to do that, how to work spells for passion.
You brought that up earlier.
In other words, you two talk very much alike.
You just mention Satan, and of course you're involved in the church of.
But other than that, you just frankly sound a lot alike.
So obviously you didn't hear her because I promise you she's passed on, you would have remembered.
A lot of people that talk that kind of talk and they're not Satanists, I don't understand why they're not a Satanist.
It seems like a logical step to me.
I know a lot of the, in the 60s, there was a group calling themselves W-I-T-C-H, and they were essentially militant feminists that were using the metaphors of being witches and being evil and being ugly and empowering themselves, like the word queer, kind of giving themselves that life and that strength by calling themselves witches.
And, you know, as a Satanist, I think it's a little bit short of the mark.
You know, if you're going that far and you don't align yourself with, because we call ourselves Satanists for a lot of different reasons, as I've already explained, because most of the great thinkers, including and up to Copernicus, Galileo, and more recent, you know, people have always been called heretics and blasphemers.
And so why don't you pridefully say, yes, I align myself with all that you consider evil, and I go to those dark places.
I mean, I consider you a fellow traveler.
You know, you go to those dark places too.
And you force people to expand their paradigms.
You know, you bring in speculation and provocation, and you make people, you say, okay, here it is.
You think about this.
I'm forcing you to confront this.
And you think about it.
And you can either reject it and say it doesn't exist or you can try to expand your consciousness to include this.
I think that many things that we discuss in the paranormal world do exist.
And what I don't understand is if you feel the same way, and I know you do, how can that not lead you to a curiosity about a maker, a creator, and Satan, all of those things being possible?
I can't force myself to believe in a God that I don't believe exists.
I can't force myself to believe that some guy 2,000 years ago in the Middle East dying, if he did live, if he was an individual, and he wasn't just a compilation of a bunch of supposed fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, I can't believe that he has any bearing on my life as I live and breathe today.
I'm the one who controls what I'm doing now.
And if I had to believe, if I really tried to believe in a God that was omnipotent and omniscient and I could pray to and he would pay attention to me, each little sparrow and each little butterfly and each little, you know, grain of sand in the cosmos, he cares about, okay, so there's such a being.
It would create such frustration and anger in me to believe in that kind of God.
If I tried to, and I really tried to pray, and I really tried to understand, I would be homicidal because I could not reconcile why this being who supposedly loves me would threaten me and manipulate me in such a petulant, petty way that I have to bow down and worship him and do what he tells me to do, or he'll throw me into a fiery pit for all eternity.
Okay, so my free will tells me that I'm a representative of Satan because if that God created me with a brain, he wants me to have a scientific mind, a rational mind.
He wants me to challenge.
He wants me to be against self-deceit.
And he doesn't want me to bow down and worship him.
So I'm doing my job.
I'm not killing anybody.
I'm not stealing from anybody.
I have a very sound base of ethics that I move from.
I don't need a God who's going to threaten me or strongarm me so that I'll do the right thing.
I do it because I live in a society where it's expected of me, and I want the same respect from my other fellow creatures.
And so that's the contract.
That's the social contract like Rousseau talked about.
The whole anti-heroic Miltonian attitude of even when your back is up against the wall, when you don't have anything else in you, even when you've been demonized and put upon and attacked mercilessly by the majority, you still are prideful and defiant and creative and driven.
There's a whole generation, two generations now of people applying Satanism every day of their lives.
And one of the reasons why I'm on your show is, well, three reasons.
One, you know, because you've got a wonderful show.
And it's an honor and a pleasure to be on your show.
But also, people are Satanists all around the world now.
It's a very popular philosophy, but a lot of times you don't even know when there's a Satanist working next to you or teaching your children or babysitting your parents.
Or you don't know that they're Satanists because it's not necessary for you to disclose that you're a Satanist.
In our version of the world, if it does you no good to expose yourself, then don't do it.
You know, people are confused.
They don't understand it.
But I want people to know that if you find out that your coworker is a Satanist, that there's nothing for you to fear or get freaked out about.
You know, these are our ethics.
These are our attitudes.
These are our habits.
We stick to our own most of the time.
We keep our nose out of your business.
As long as you don't try preaching to me, I'm not going to preach to you.
You're not going to find Satanists on the street corners handing out pamphlets or knocking on your door and waking you up at 7 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday or Sunday.
You know, we figure we want the information to be out there.
That's what the Church of Satan is here for, is to continue to codify and clarify what Anton LeVay said, keep his ideas pure, blending the poetic and the rational parts of human beings.
And if you're interested in it, you will seek us out and you'll find out if it's the right thing.
If it's not for you, that's fine.
If you know of a Satanist, I don't want you to overreact and say, oh, I want you to understand and be able to have an intelligent conversation with them.
It started out, I was working in the office in San Francisco along with other people.
And as I began to know him, I began taking notes on...
He'd tell jokes.
He'd tell these stories about his life and about the people that he'd known and his lion and his leopard and people that he'd known on the police force would come by and he'd talk with them.
And I had extraordinary access.
And I had a pencil and a tablet, and I started writing down some of these stories and some of the stuff that he was talking about because I knew that he was an important historical man.
He will be remembered many, many years from now.
And What he was saying needed to be written down.
So I wrote the biography, and we became more intimate.
Our relationship changed, and that's why the new Secret Life of a Satanist is the last few chapters are materially different than the first few chapters.
The last chapters are much more, I hope I don't become too modeling or I hope I don't break down the image of who he was, but it's much more intimate portrait of him as a man and what he struggled through in the last years of his life and how productive he was at the same time.
And so I want people to know the strength that he had because he was undergoing physical challenges as well as the satanic panic and legal challenges.
But, of course, you remember the satanic panic of the mid-80s to the 90s.
Early 90s, a lot of people may not remember, but it was an insane period of time.
I mean, we had Geraldo and Sally Jesse Raphael and Oprah Winfrey with these people who were claiming to have been molested as children in satanic sacrifices and baby breeders.
And they tore up a whole, well, you know what happened in Manhattan Beach with the preschool.
And yeah, the FBI finally did a thorough search of everything and said there is no international satanic conspiracy.
But this was only after at least two documents were introduced into state legislation to ban the practice of Satanism as a religion.
Not Judaism, not Church of Christ, Satanism, which is a recognized religion in this country, recognized in the Chaplain's Guide to the Military Services.
Well, and people were, I mean, their lives were broken.
They got fired from their jobs.
They were going through divorces, and people lost their children.
They had child protective custody coming in and taking their children away just on accusations.
And finally, I think the court system and the insurance companies got tired of paying these bills for these recovered memories and these supposed counselors that were behind so much of it.
But it was a time of suspicion.
And the two elements that Dr. LeVay hated so much was that they would go on these shows, and instead of talking about real Satanism, they'd talk about some animal sacrifices or child sacrifices.
And so the teenagers who were watching these shows and listening to this hysteria would say, ooh, I want to be like, you know, a real Satanist.
And so they would go off and maybe sacrifice a dog or something.
And that would end up in the local papers.
And Dr. LeVay loved animals.
He had many, many wonderful animals that he had a great relationship with.
And one of the tenets that he makes very clear in our satanic statements and in the satanic Bible is you would not hurt an animal or a child because they're the most natural magicians.
And instead of waving the satanic Bible around in disgust and saying, ooh, isn't this awful, they wouldn't read the book and they wouldn't tell people that's what Satanism really represented.
And he said, you know, all of these animals, if there are animals being hurt or killed in this fashion because of, you know, they think that that's what real Satanists do, these animals should be placed on Oprah Winfrey's and Geraldo Rivera's doorsteps because they're the ones that are doing it, not us.
They're the ones that are leading these people to do this.
Well, there are people that use any number of contexts for their disturbances.
They create fantasies for what, I mean, I'm not a psychoanalyst, and I haven't talked to her.
I don't know about her specifically, but I'm not qualified to pass judgment on her particular diagnosis, but I know people do a lot who want attention and who, you know, they may feel even that they have a real pain or they have real memories or something, but usually it can be traced to something very specific, and it's a context that they need to put their pain in.
And they need a counselor that can actually help them, not feed their fantasies, but actually help them move away from their fantasies into a productive life.
So, again, I'm struggling a little bit with this, Blanche, because on the one hand, you sort of lay out Satanism as humanism, but then on the other hand, you'll go down that highway saying, well, yes, magic is certainly real, and much of the paranormal could be real.
And certainly I've discussed a great deal of this.
And that's kind of where you stop.
You don't continue down that road.
It seems to me once you've embraced the paranormal and the fact that magic, real magic can be done, then you have to be looking at a power beyond human power, humanism.
We start from the position that humans are rational animals.
We're animals.
That's the seventh, you know, our foundational document is the nine satanic statement.
And the seventh, if I may, if you will indulge me, Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who, because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development, has become the most vicious animal of all.
And we can see what's happening because of that viciousness to animals all around the world.
So we're, you know, we're selfish and short-sighted creatures.
But instead of just leaving it at that, I could be an atheist or I could be a humanist, but there's a whole half of our brain that isn't addressed by atheism or humanism.
Because in Anton LeVay, for the first time in history, he reconciled the irreconcilable.
He reconciled the poetry, the mystery, the magic of being a human being, of writing symphonies, of writing great literature, of having visions and creating great architecture and creating love, relationships, all of these fantasies that are human, that are a big part of being human.
So he fed that into sort of a pomp and mystery of satanic imagery so that we can utilize all the power within us.
And I don't see any irreconcilable there at all.
The power does not come from an external source.
It comes from me.
It comes from you.
It comes from the other people that are working with me for the same goals.
And that is now being quantified, again, getting back to recent books by Dean Raden and McTaggart and other people.
It's now being quantified in a scientific way that there is a group effect.
When several people, lots of people are concentrating in the same direction at the same time, it does have a measurable effect.
And I don't understand it, and I don't pretend to understand the dynamics of it.
I think that scientists will be studying it more and more, but we're storytelling creatures.
That's what we do.
If some alien came from another planet, imagine how weird it would look that we go to movies, that we watch these little boxes with all these stories on them, that we read these books, and they're all fantasies.
They're all stories.
Why do we do that?
Because we're storytelling creatures.
We gain strength from these metaphors and these images and these practices of various emotions.
And we like drama.
We like symbols.
We like passion.
We like rituals and celebrations that bind us together and communicate our group values.
And that's all that Satanism is, like any other religion.
I've got an atheist that I bring on the show from time to time named Matthew Alper, very interesting guy.
Maybe you heard him one time.
Anyway, he wrote a book that I find fascinating, and I would like to describe to you the premise.
The book is called The God Part of the Brain.
And it basically, I'm not going to do it justice here, but basically it suggests that all human beings, and we include those who are found on otherwise uninhabited islands, you know, natives that worship one thing or another,
you know, the sun perhaps, the moon, the trees, it doesn't matter, that human beings are programmed by something in our brain, or some part of our brain, that demands that we worship something, that we believe in some sort of deity greater than ourselves.
And he thinks that they will eventually identify that part of the brain that causes this.
I wonder how you feel about that, because it is true if you look around the world, everybody, just about everybody, even you, worships something.
Well, I hesitate with the word worship, except that I worship myself, but I don't worship something external.
Just metaphorically, that's a poetic representation of me.
You know, Those images are a poetic projection of me.
But yeah, I certainly think it's a fascinating study, the God part of the brain.
I can definitely see that because it is a near-universal that people like to.
And what I've credited to, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is that it's a, and maybe he even includes this part, when we're in nature, when we're trying to survive, when we were in our earliest stages, our brains were developing.
Our survival depended on seeing patterns, seeing the gestalt, seeing the tiger hidden in the trees.
And so we look for patterns and we try to make sense of things.
That's what we do all the time.
That's the scientific part of our mind is trying to make sense.
And we like things to progress in beginning, middle, end.
We like things to be just.
We like for good people to get rewarded and bad people to go to a bad place and get punished.
We like that.
So we tell stories to ourselves that that's what's really happening.
So, yeah, I can see that that would be a very interesting study.
All right, so I have a computer, and I have this thing called the wormhole, and they can go to a certain place and send me a message as I'm doing a program, you know, like right now.
And before I read you anything, what would you imagine the response to your being on the program is tonight?
You know, Anton LeVay said that people will pick up his book and they'll read it and they'll either say, my God, I've felt this way all my life, but I didn't know what to call myself.
I guess I'm a Satanist.
That's exactly the way I feel.
Or they, you know, throw the book across the room in disgust.
Because that wouldn't be addressing the essential problem that Satanism, calling it Satanism, represents.
Satanism isn't just atheistic.
It's anti-theistic.
And it's not just a matter of, oh, well, okay, so that works for them.
Okay, that's fine.
It's not fine.
People who are running our country, that are running our world all around the world, most of them are basing their lives on irrationality and muddled thinking and scapegoating.
And these people are leading us in certain directions, economically, socially, ecologically.
And it's going to affect you.
One way or another, it's going to affect you.
And so Satanists, by nature, choose active opposition.
You need something constructive for your life, not just a denial of something like atheism.
I think it's to recognize that humans, I see Satan as a quintessentially human metaphor.
He's the risk taker.
He's the underdog.
He's the one who triumphs even though he's vilified.
He's the solitary romantic figure.
And it's a human.
It's humans.
Not Jesus hanging on the cross and being nice to everybody.
We've fallen from grace, both of us.
Satan and humans have fallen from grace because of our self-determination and our pride.
And instead of sniveling and whining, we stumble forward by our own wit and our resourcefulness, and we create whatever life we can with the people that we love and cherish.
And you're getting shoveled this stuff from your parents.
You know, they're telling you about this guy.
Where does he live?
I don't know.
He lives in a cloud somewhere.
We've got the space station up there, but they can't see him.
Well, he lives more over that way.
I don't know what he looks like.
And kids are smart.
They start asking questions pretty early on, and they understand when someone's avoiding the truth.
And when they start feeling That mommy and daddy are not telling them the truth about this, then they start calling into question everything that mommy and daddy tells them.
Well, I don't see how any child can get past that.
That's when the trouble comes.
That's when you reach adolescence and you start realizing that maybe a lot of what you've been taught is not true.
And all of those sacred values, maybe they're not real.
And when you link ethics to the supernatural, that God tells you to do this, not because it's right or wrong, not because essentially it's good for civilization for you to make these decisions, but because some supernatural guy with a long white beard is strong arming you and threatening you if you don't do right, then that's not good for society.
Again, that's not a good structure.
That's not a good foundation.
It should be because this is what is right for the world.
This is how we bind together as a human race, you know?
But really, I mean, I think if the world were suddenly, you know, filled with Satanists, which is never, ever going to happen because, again, you know, talking about different parts of the brain, we always have to have the, you know, 2% who are the leaders or the innovators or the risk takers and the rest of the people that really would rather just get along and not think about things very much.
You know, just tell me what to do, tell me where to go, tell me what to buy, and I'll be comfortable, and you tell me what to do.
But the Satanists who stand out, the creative people, the eccentric people, the weirdos, I think that they would be better at running things because they would hopefully have actual discussions, not ad hominem attacks.
They would start talking about things, not pigeonholing themselves and saying, well, I'm a conservative, so I have to vote this way, or I'm a liberal, so I have to vote that way, and that's a bad person over there.
The Koch brothers are awful or evil, or the unions are awful or evil, because they're in the other camp, and I don't have to listen to anything they have to say.
I just have to listen to what my party tells me to do.
And that's how we've gotten into the trouble that we have.
Because people aren't voting.
They aren't voting the issues or the man.
They're voting according to their party authority.
Because humans are, as I say, tend to be very short-sighted and selfish creatures.
I'm all for selfishness, but when you are so short-sighted that you don't see the consequences of what you're doing and the long-term consequences to the earth and to other humans and animals, then that's just being stupid.
And the second one is pretentiousness, empty posturing.
It's very irritating.
And Anton LeVay always had the idea that if you're a satanic priest, you should be able to take the garbage out.
You have to be able to come up with the goods ultimately.
And that's what made his philosophy so strong, what makes his philosophy so strong, because he was a very genuine person.
Whenever he would start, when he'd have someone come over, a lot of times they'd want to talk about Satanism.
He didn't want to talk about Satanism all the time.
He'd want to talk about old movies or cars or guns or music or characters.
And, You know, people were not disappointed because he was a wonderful raconteur and a fabulous musician.
So, if you were treated to an evening of music with him, you'd walk away very happily.
But he would say these things, and when he sounded a little bit pompous or pontifical, or as he perceived himself to be taking himself too seriously, he'd undercut it with a joke.
He had a whole repertoire of jokes, and that was one of the books that I wish he had been able to put together before he passed away, was a book of satanic parables, which would have been all of his favorite jokes.
While we're on that subject, and I want more sins, but while we're on the subject, it now has been 50 years since the Church of Satan began, and 20 years since Anton died in 97.
So an obvious question is, how's the church doing without Anton?
Well, the tradition of the left-hand path is that you have to seek it out.
It is a singular path, and it's a dangerous path.
And so there are a lot of imitators out there.
There are potholes along the road.
But if you're drawn to Satanism and you like the metaphors and you like what you've heard of Satanism, if you find it intriguing, then, you know, we have the website, churchofsatan.com.
It's a portal for all the activities that a lot of Satanists are doing right now around the world.
And it's got a lot of materials on there for what Satanism is and isn't.
Because it's a singular path, and it will lead you into as close as you can get to madness.
What I mean by that is if you are inculcated with Satan is evil, Satanists are evil, all your life, and you step into that world and you're not ready for it, then your very fear will act against you.
You will conjure forth because the whole idea is that we're conjuring things, we're conjuring, we're focusing our energy on what we want to achieve.
But you can undercut yourself.
You can actually hurt yourself.
And if you're feeling guilty or you're feeling afraid or if there's any residual ill feelings, and this is purely psychological, this isn't magical.
This is psychological.
When someone is doing something that deep down inside they're conflicted about, you can manifest it physically with pain, aches, headaches, stomach upset, and drawing all kinds of terrible things into your life.
So it's not for everybody.
As I say, it's a particular vibration that people find brings them joy, happiness, and inspiration.
But if you don't find that from Satanism, run away and run away fast.
Okay, I don't think a Ouija board, per se, is dangerous, but I had a very, very bad experience with one that I will not discuss and never have publicly.
I think that it is the intent of the users of that board that brings about some of the bad experiences that people have had.
I'd say you're definitely on the right track with that.
I would also say that, as I was trying to explain, if you have any residual doubts or fears or guilts, that's a good medium for those things to open up to you and start attacking you.
That means expecting everybody else to be like you are.
You're a moral person, an ethical person.
You have certain values.
You're vulnerable to somebody that comes along and tries to steal your money because he doesn't have the same values, but he might give you a wonderful line to try to convince you to part with your goods.
So you have to be on guard.
That's the essence of solipsism.
You have to be constantly vigilant and look through illusions that people are trying to, you know, it's very Machiavellian.
And that's an interesting thing talking about 50 years of the Church of Satan.
And one of the questions is, does it act as a religion should?
Does it help you guide your life to prosperity and happiness?
Does it help you work within a community?
Is it just, you know, put on black clothes, listen to heavy metal music, Marilyn Manson, and piss off your parents or something?
Or is it something that can actually lead you through getting a job, going to school, having children, raising children, deaths, births?
Yes, it does.
And it's a foundation for a lot of people who have been lifelong Satanists now.
And the most gratifying thing that happens to me sometimes now, and I'm humbled by it, is when people come up to me and they say, you know, Miss Barton, I've read your books.
I was a teenager.
I was being rebellious.
I went to Satanism.
And I found out what it really was.
And it really changed my life.
And now I'm a successful attorney or, you know, video producer or, you know, whatever they're doing with their lives.
Well, there are two topics I'd like to bring into the conversation.
Number one, a little thought experiment.
Hypothetically, if there was an evil cosmic entity, not necessarily the devil per se, but let's say in the very nature of the cosmos, there is a being that is pure evil.
Would it not be the best way for it to gain followers and supporters to do its will to convince its supporters that what they're doing is actually for themselves?
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, and you're not the first person that has presented that idea, you know, that the devil is ultimately, you know, the liar, so you can't believe anything he says.
But again, I use it as a metaphor for life.
I use it as a representative of liberty.
And if there was an evil, an absolute evil entity, and you could bring me proof that there was such an evil entity that was somehow fogging my mind, then that would be a very valuable thing to do.
But maybe this creature that you're talking about, you know, it could be God just the same.
It could be someone like God who's got these people under his control.
And these humans are giving me all this energy.
And I make them worship me.
And it doesn't matter to them.
I've got it worked so that there's this other guy that I blame all the bad stuff on.
And if they worship me and they give me energy, then I get stronger.
And, you know, it doesn't matter if I kill lots of kids or make people hate each other or kill lots of animals.
They'll still love me.
So, you know, I mean, it's, I understand where you're coming from, but, you know, it's a thought experiment that doesn't go very far for me.
unidentified
Okay, that's a fair answer.
And you also, you expressed that you admired cultural and industrial trailblazers, right?
Oh, yes.
Okay.
Well, you might know that many businesses, like, for example, Apple, you know, in California, they're practicing mindfulness and meditation, which is principles of Eastern religions, belief systems that promote separation from the ego.
Now, it seems that your beliefs are sort of contrasting that, that it's self-worship and, I guess, reinforcement of the ego.
I think that the way we perceive it is you're asking for the consequences that you get out of life.
You conjure forth what you get.
So, yeah, there are definitely consequences for the actions that you take.
As far as getting back to your idea about meditation and consciousness, yes, definitely.
Strengthening your own mind, strengthening your body, being able to use yoga and strengthening the energies that flow through us.
I personally am a great follower of that, and I think a lot of Satanists are.
We're bioelectrical beings, and if we can concentrate that, again, that's what magic is about, is concentrating our energies, aligning ourselves with our true core, and being able to release, bring in energy from around us and release it appropriately.
Okay, well, so as I've listened to the interview, you think there is something to karma, but if there isn't, there is a spell that'll take care of it, right?
I have, again, my mind is open to reincarnation, quite frankly, because personally I have had some interesting experiences along those lines, like you with the Ouija board.
I don't need to go into them.
But my mind is open to a lot of things.
You know, like Lewis Carroll said, I try to believe three unbelievable things before breakfast.
Okay, the first question, yes, we are recognized as a religious entity by the United States government.
We're included in the Chaplain's Guide to Military, to Chaplains Servicing Military People, and that's updated periodically.
However, we do not take advantage of our tax-exempt status because one of our premises, vital premises, is that all churches should be taxed appropriately like any other business.
So as an ethical point, we do pay taxes.
The second question was...
unidentified
That is, if necessary, if you were put in jail, for example, you would get special treatment in terms of accommodating your practices.
It sounds like if you're in the first, you're probably in the second.
Well, we do have prisoners who contact us who say they're having trouble getting materials, and they do try to provide, you know, it depends on the chaplain at the particular prison and the administrators of the particular prison.
Some of them are very open.
They should have the right to practice Satanism, at least get together with fellow Satanists and have their materials and perhaps rituals within the confines of the requirements of the prison.
You know, they can't have daggers and they can't have firearms and they can't have candles or certain things.
But, you know, just getting together to read the Satanic Bible.
The McMartin preschool case, I believe one of the cases that he's referring to, was one of the most expensive and perhaps to date still the most expensive and extensive court case in California history.
A lot of accusations were thrown around, including that the kids were moved during the rituals, that some of them said they'd been put naked into a cage with a lion.
And Chuck Norris was identified as one of their molesters.
They said that they had their faces smeared with feces and blood and urine and that they'd seen babies cooked and eaten.
And backhoes were brought in, heavy machinery was brought in.
All of this was supposed to have taken place in tunnels beneath the preschool by the people that were running the preschool.
No tunnels were found.
No lions were found.
The most damning evidence that was found was toy rabbit ears and a candle.
And I know that there was a lot of hysteria, but there were a lot of people going on shows to get attention.
Well, this, again, was addressed quite keenly in the satanic Bible.
And I think it was a reaction to what Anton Levy found with practitioners, or at least legends about practitioners of magic up until that point.
And he was disgusted by the idea that someone would take an innocent animal.
Even Aleister Crowley talked about animal sacrifice.
And that someone would take an innocent animal and shed its blood to try to get some kind of power from that animal when the truth of the matter is it's a substitute for a good orgasm.
If you can't go into the ritual chamber and have a good orgasm, work yourself up into a real frenzy and let go of all that energy, let go of all your inhibitions and become a real human being in the ritual chamber, you have no business trying to perform magic at all.
A lot of people, a lot of police cops for Christ is what they were termed, who had these seminars that they were selling to various police forces around the country to try to gain money from them.
There were also a lot of counselors, religious or otherwise, that were getting a lot of money.
And there were the talk show people who needed eccentric people to go on their shows and make a good controversial story.
So everyone was gaining, except the real Satanists, you know, who would try to go on these shows to get another word in edge-wise.
They didn't give me the kind of time that you've been kind enough to give me, Mr. Bell.
When we would get on, if we would even get on to tell what Satanism was really about, we'd get maybe two sentences, and the rest of the show would all be about baby breeders or a lot of insanity.
So we didn't fit the paradigm.
And then they tried to, as a defense for that, they said, well, you know, they didn't want to get sued by us.
So they'd say, well, we're not talking about you.
We're talking about bad Satanists.
We're talking about traditional Satanists.
They tried to make it into categories.
And Anton LeVay said, no, there are Satanists, and then there are nuts, just like there are Christians, and then there are nuts.
You know, you can use the Easter bunny, you can use Jesus, you can use Buddha to justify whatever crimes you want, but that doesn't mean that you're actually following that religious philosophy.
That's the essence of what we're trying to get across here is that when you scapegoat people, like some people are doing in the Middle East right now, then you can go do whatever you want to them, and they don't deserve your empathy.
They don't deserve your sympathy because they are unclean and they are demonic and they are possessed and they are evil.
So you can hurt them and you can demonize them and you can scapegoat them and do whatever you want to them because they are the others.
That's very dangerous thinking.
It's not an us versus them.
I'm a human being.
You're a human being, Leonard.
And we all have foibles.
We all have faults.
We all have strengths.
And we have to get together to find out how to solve problems.
That is an unaffiliated, small group that we consider rather laughable.
They came off as sort of street performers.
They're trying to put some kind of wedge between they're trying to create controversy regarding the church and state.
Like, if they try to put this statue in, then that'll force other people out of the public square.
The true satanic posture, as articulated very well by our high priest, is that we believe in the Founding Fathers' vision of separation of church and state.
Not having any Buddhist or Hindu or satanic or Wiccan or Christian association because it's very dangerous when church and state are work in concert.
Then you've got the civil aspects and you've got the magical aspects of the boogeymen that are going to hurt you if you don't do right.
And our founding fathers were as close as they could be to deists.
Most of the ones who were the real movers and shakers, Thomas Jefferson and Paine, they were deists and they didn't believe in a God having real effect in your life.
Of course, in those days you had to posture toward Christianity a lot, but they were, you know, they were free thinkers.
I think that America is a quintessentially satanic country.
You know, we grew right out of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment.
And, you know, people like James Madison, John Adams, that's a whole different conversation.
I became a member of the Church of Satan in the early 1990s.
And, you know, I was brought up going to Southern Baptist Church and the youth groups.
And they pounded, you know, the Satanic Bible is the ultimate evil book and all this.
So eventually I read the Satanic Bible and it was like getting cold water thrown in your face.
It was like it's just reason and logic and open-mindedness when it comes into the areas of the supernatural and magic.
And so that's kind of what my take was.
I became a member.
I knew they weren't going to pound down my door and have me go to meetings and all this just out of respect for the logic that was put down and given, you know, to where I saw my ideals on page.
Are you familiar with the studies on the pineal gland in the human brain, like essentially the third eye and like DMT, the release of DMT, and how that kind of, I believe, goes in with magic and all that.
And then also in your personal magical experiences, do you, like for me, sometimes, you know, I feel real strong and then it's like the, I feel weak sometimes in magical nature.
And I don't think it's like because I'm physically sick or I'm going through emotional stress, just like those waves of power, power, and energy.
I think the wave has been proven to be essential to the earth in general.
There's a waxing and a waning that humans are also aligned with.
And within your own magical practice, it's very probable that some days, you know, and again, this has been measured scientifically, some days you feel alert and on top of things and right on top of your game.
And then other days you just feel sort of dissipated and not really concentrating.
So, yes, and I have heard about, you know, the pineal gland and how that's a known chakra there, a very powerful one.
So, you know, there have been a lot of people throughout the millennia who have talked about the third eye and its importance to magic and meditation.
Of course, he started the Church of Satan in the 60s in San Francisco, you know, 1966.
The summer of love, there were people dropping acid all over the place, and there were people that were pointing to acid as a method, a gateway to wonderful enlightenment and concentration and new worlds and new achievements.
And he had a hard and fast rule that he did not allow people that were drunk or high in the ritual chamber because things could be very misconstrued.
People could become violent.
They could become distracted and distracting.
And he felt that, you know, that was not the way to perform magic, that you need to be concentrated.
You need to be clear on your intent and what you're doing in the ritual chamber.
So I suppose there are plenty of people that use recreational drugs.
But again, if you're doing it illegally, then you have to suffer the consequences if you get caught.
And if we know about it, then you'll probably get kicked out of the organization.
I know you're probably super tired of fielding questions about satanic ritual abuse, but I have one from kind of a weird angle.
That's okay.
Let's hear it.
Okay, in the wake of the death of Jimmy Savile, this British TV presenter and entertainer, it's come out that in Britain, at least, there actually was a massive pedophile conspiracy in the 1980s and late 70s.
Well, my point is it's Because again, these are the same people who wanted to ban gay people from teaching, who wanted to exclude non-Christian religions from public venues.
And at the same time, it's now coming out that this bizarre.
And the other point is that during the satanic panic, a lot of Wiccans were asked, you know, well, what about Satanists?
You know, do they do bad things?
Or they were attacked.
They were thrown into the same boiling pot of water with Satanists in these accusations.
And instead of coming forward and saying, yes, I'm a Wiccan, I've read about Satanism.
I know Satanists.
And they don't do bad things.
Instead, a lot of them actually Crawled on the bandwagon to protect themselves and said, Oh, we're good witches, but those people over there, I don't know what they're doing.
So I was similar to that.
That was a long time ago, granted.
But there's still an essence of us versus them, good versus evil in there.
Whereas I say, you know, don't put yourself in a protective circle.
Invite your demons in.
Own what you are as a human being and deal with that.
The first thing I'd like to address is the idea that I feel that humans are top of the food chain and more highly evolved than other animals.
I think the point that I was trying to make and that Anton LeVay has made with the seventh satanic statement that I read is that because we, quote unquote, feel that we are so divine and spiritual and intellectual, we have become the most vicious animal of all, meaning that other animals are being the best animals that they are being.
Humans don't always live up to their potential.
They throw a lot of log jams in their own way.
They're more afraid of their own success than they are of their own failure.
But humans, like a simple spider or a bird, they're out there doing their birdie little things.
They're doing the best they possibly can, and they use every resource that they can.
They go toward pleasure, they avoid pain, and they do it in the most efficient manner they can, which is what biologists define life as, is, you know, those three elements.
And so don't get me, don't think that I'm saying that humans are so superb and wonderful compared to other animals because I truly don't.
But getting to your point with faith, as a Satanist, I feel that faith is the ultimate betrayal of all we are as humans.
You know, I understand your point about sort of giving yourself over to a greater power and trusting in that power, but I can't do that.
I can't relinquish that.
If I do that, if I give up my independence, my discernment, if I give up the ability to question things scientifically and challenge everything, I've given up everything that we've evolved to be over the last few million years.
unidentified
And I can certainly understand that, especially now in this day and age, we know so much as humans.
If certain visions of reality can be believed, we have plunged into materialism and are cut off from what we used to be able to see as spirit.
I'm sorry to do this, Caller, but I'm way short on time.
And you can respond to that when we get back, but we've got to take a very brief break.
Blanche, hold on.
What a show is what I would say.
What a program.
I suspect not what you thought it would be.
Blanche, Barton is my guest.
I'm Art Bell.
unidentified
I'm Art Bell.
All of the city streets is leading Well, I'm going to say a little down a mile an hour ago Well, I'm going to say a little down a mile an hour ago Took a look around and went in a wind blow.
All right, well, I think we should all have a moment of silence.
Tonight's show has got to be pretty serious evidence that JC has passed away.
If not, you know, he certainly would have been here.
He's been absent from his Facebook page since early, well, before mid July.
And so just a moment of silence for he who would have been here.
He could have been.
And with that, back to Blanche Barton.
And Blanche, I held this caller over because I don't think he was finishing his thought.
Caller?
unidentified
Yeah, just I was saying we plunged into materialism.
It's very difficult now without prophets and things like that, real prophets, to show us what God's really saying to have any kind of faith because really all we have left is the light of human reason.
Albert Pipe talks about it in his three Masonic writings As something we don't need to have superstition about or faith.
And that's absolutely true.
We don't.
But for me, it's not enough.
And I guess the real question is: I think the question goes out to everybody: do you believe in your own intellect or man's intellect, or do you believe in God or faith or whatever you are, Christ, whatever you want to call it?
Well, I'm a big advocate of materialism, what we can see, what we can feel, the human body, the human brain, our emotions.
I'm a big believer in the sins, and I try to practice at least one a day.
Lust and gluttony are two of my favorites.
But not to be flippant, I understand.
He seems like a very sincere man, Johnny, and I feel that there is a lot of materialism going on in the world as well, and we're sacrificing happiness in a certain way because of it.
And recently I was at a conclave, a gathering in Washington, D.C. of Satanists at the end of April, and I gave a little talk.
And one of the things, it was a wonderful gathering with terrific people there from many different professions.
And it was great to be in a room full of people that you don't have to explain your basic thoughts to, who are all attuned with what we were thinking.
But there is a difference between greed and satisfaction.
And what we're doing to the earth is a consequence of unbridled greed and not looking down the road to see the consequences of what we're doing.
And that is a real problem.
But again, that doesn't come from somebody, Satan or some demons or some God whispering in my ear.
That comes from looking around and seeing what's happening to our planet and crying about it.
Yes, he had a wonderful relationship with Kenneth Anger.
Kenneth Anger was, again, in the 60s San Francisco scene very much, and he's an innovative filmmaker.
He used techniques that were sort of, I guess, in the psychedelic realm, but they're very effective films.
And I know he has a lot of fans to this day.
He influenced a lot of small films, and they were very good friends.
I think he's sort of drifted away since Dr. LeVay has passed.
He's gone in other directions.
But yes, they were very good friends for a long time.
The Devil's Reign was a wonderful set to work on.
Dr. LeVay said he had a wonderful time.
William Shatner, John Travolta, the director was a great director.
They were in Mexico filming, and he did lots of interviews with people who were interested in his philosophy.
And yes, Ida Lupino was also on that cast.
And yeah, he made some good friends, and they had a whopping good time.
unidentified
I would also point out we have just coincidentally watched Paradise Lost, the childhood murders at Robin Hood Hills tonight.
And for all the satanic, panicked people that still don't get how bad this paranoia was, watch that movie and realize what this madness caused and how it's ruined lives.
And one element of it also that I didn't bring up is the separation.
I mean, it's hard enough for teenage kids to talk to their parents and parents to talk to their kids.
But when you've got this film between you of people from your church or people in authority telling you to look for your children, see if they're wearing black clothes or if they're playing Dungeons and Dragons or if they have stained glass or if they're spending too much time alone, they may be dabbling in Satanism and this may be leading them to criminal activities.
How can you possibly communicate with your child when you're burning the records that are giving him strength and inspiration?
So it did cause a lot of pain for a lot of people.
I think it's the job of Long Form Talk Radio to examine things that, frankly, you didn't know about.
And I think tonight is a perfect example of that.
Alana from, well, it doesn't say where she's from, actually, through the wormhole asks, please ask Blanche if there are any satanic holidays, and what do they celebrate and how?
True to our egotistic philosophy, our favorite holiday of the year is, of course, my own birthday.
That's what I celebrate, and all my friends celebrate it and tell me how wonderful I am and give me lots of support.
After that, we have Wahlpergasnacht, which is a traditional magical night.
A lot of important things have happened on Walpurgasnacht, including the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966.
And then after that, we like to celebrate, depending on what your particular likes and dislikes are, but most of us acknowledge at least the equinoxes and the solstices and other dates that are particularly important to us, whatever our context is.
Blanche, I wanted to ask you that my understanding was that after the passing of Anton LeVay, that there was a kind of a schism in the Church of Satan between like Michael Aquino and Anton LeVay's daughters, Zina and the other girl.
And I was wondering if you could tell me, give me some information on that and maybe tell me if you yourself were involved or if you knew anything about how the whole thing played out.
That's sort of one of those ideas, I guess, like Anton LeVay's deathbed confession or something.
But it was really rather uneventful.
I'd been acting in the capacity of high priestess.
I took over as high priestess.
I continued the philosophy until I passed the reins to Peter Gilmore, who is our present high priest and doing a wonderful job of that.
He has published a wonderful collection of essays called the Satanic Scriptures.
And I would, for further information about Satanism, I would definitely point people in that direction.
And Peggy Nadramia is our high priestess.
I think one of the keys to our survival after Dr. LeVay passed away has been the continuity that we've had.
The people that are behind the organization that are articulating and clarifying his philosophy are absolutely in concert and have a deep and abiding understanding of all the aspects of what he put together in the philosophy of Satanism.
You know, as I say, both the rational and the poetic sides and the carny sides and the robust black capes and black candles side.
Going to the phones, you're on the air with Blanche.
Hi.
unidentified
Hi, Art.
Hi, Blanche.
My name is Dean, and I'm been in San Francisco my whole life, and I lived out in the avenue, so I knew about the house out there, the black house out on California Street.
Blanche, the last caller kind of touched on what I was going to talk about.
The 60s, from what I see, you're a little bit younger than me.
And in the 60s, I was about 19 or 20 in the late 60s.
And there were so many charismatic people like Anton.
There's no doubt that he had a big ego.
There's no doubt that he drew a lot of people around him.
I picked up hitchhiking a couple of Satanists up on Mount Tam one time whose car had broken down.
So I guess my question is, you know, I know Carla, not super well, but I dated her back when we were both 19.
And I beg to differ.
I heard that there was quite a schism.
The house ended up being boarded up.
If there's so much power and Satanism, why all this bad blood?
I believe I've been trying to explain that we are alive and well and that we're continuing to move forward in our philosophy.
Carla and Zina, neither one, were involved directly with the administrative side of the organization at the time of their father's death.
Zina had, if you want to get into the messy details of it, it's not messy on my part, but it's rather embarrassing for her that she chose to disown her father years before his death and never reconciled with him.
Carla had reconciled with him.
They'd been off and on.
She had been involved in her life, and she had periods of separation from her dad, but she did reconcile with him toward the end of his life.
But, you know, neither one of them were qualified to be in a leadership position within the organization, and I don't think their father ever expected them to be.
Carla had done some spokesperson roles in the early days, and she was comfortable with that, I suppose.
But there wasn't, we're all cohesive and we're moving forward with articulating what Satanism is and can be.
unidentified
Well, I understand that she puts on this, what she calls, black Christmas every year.
And I'm not clear.
Maybe you could clear that up.
I thought that Anton and Carla and Zena were all Jewish faith before this all started and before he went in Life magazine and posed and got tight with Hollywood, you know?
Anton LeVay is giving the sign of the horns on the back of the Satanic Bible.
And that, of course, has been adopted by a lot of rockers.
But the 666 really doesn't have a big reference point for me or most Satanists, except for the amusement that other people seem to really give it a lot of potency.
But anyway, with your guest, I find it very interesting that she's avoiding the fact that this man that you're saying did such good things is doing the work of Satan.
And, I mean, we all know that his biggest trick is to Convince you that he doesn't exist.
There was a film, actually, called Satanis, and it's wonderful.
It's kind of hard to find, but if you find it, there were interviews with neighbors and talking about seeing the lion and the weird rituals through the front windows, and they all seemed quite captivated by it.
But yes, there were complaints about the lion, and he had to give Togar to the zoo, and it was heartbreaking for him because they were very close.
Our policy is that we don't know, that there's not enough evidence to prove that there is an afterlife.
And since we can only assume that there is not, it's better to err in the direction that there is not and get the most out of every breath that you have right now, today, here and now, because you don't know what's afterwards and you don't know when it'll end.
I see.
unidentified
So then you don't believe that Anton is anywhere right now?